


Unearthing the flame

by hrl (heilz)



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, M/M, commitment scares me and so does the premise of this fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-27 20:13:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6298627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heilz/pseuds/hrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>John can’t take his eyes away from the ones that burn green a breath’s length away. He is terrified, but he is also captivated. When has he ever been treated with anything but mechanical relations, orchestrated by the classist regime that sits him at the top, second only to one man he will one day replace? The remarkably, undoubtedly infuriated man before him is the first touch of reality John has ever known. And he realizes in an instant that he needs to cling to it.</em>
</p><p>Or: A fic where I take a story about pirates, in which I know absolutely nothing of the intricacies of pirating, and turn it into a royalty AU, in which I know absolutely nothing of the intricacies of pre-modern royalty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm altering my style a bit to accommodate my lack of ability to commit to writing one story for long, so this fic will be short, sweet, and hopefully one day finished in all of about maybe six or seven chapters.  
> Edit: I usually write in past tense, but for some brilliant reason I decided to write this in present tense, so if there are any non-deliberate switches between the two, I apologize in advance!

John is thirteen when he first meets James McGraw.

John, primary and sole heir to the English throne, was the recipient of a plethora of skilled mathematicians, musicians, artisans and what have you since the moment he could speak. Of course, the botched word “silver” (pronounced, as one year old John would have it, “silly-ber”) would suffice as an indication of competency in fields such as these. However, John’s continued affinity for the commodity throughout his childhood did not go unnoticed by his father the King, and it was made so that every piece of jewelry and ornamentation that belonged to the young prince would not be gold but silver.

But John can pronounce “silver” quite well now, at the tender age of thirteen. He can pronounce many words properly, in fact. He is eloquent in the arts of the tongue, and his own father is finding it increasingly difficult to keep his son under tight rein. John’s own lack of willingness to cooperate with his father’s efforts do not help matters, either. Only yesterday did John devise a plan to set the cook’s lobsters free to reign terror upon the servants in the kitchen, claws and all, and it was just this morning that John had escaped the watchful eye of his etiquette instructor to climb a tree in the garden, hidden for nearly an hour before mass panic overtook the royal family and a newly discovered sense of guilt brought him back to the ground and into the castle for a harsh scolding.

And as such it was with great deliberation that the King chooses James McGraw as John’s new literary tutor, as the old one had died nearly a month ago of a stroke that may or may not have been induced by another of John’s hijinks—this particular one including the conception of a contraption that attached a string to a door handle that, once turned and the door opened, would pull a bucket of freezing water over the poor victim’s head.

Now, James McGraw is not a profound name, not in the least. He is relatively unknown, in fact—but as a new graduate, straight from Cambridge, a king can allow himself to feel optimistic at the prospect of a freshly educated mind adhering to his own son’s education, and a subject may feel exuberated as well as obligated to accept such an offer. And that is how James McGraw’s tutorship at the royal palace comes to be.

However, if the King anticipated an alteration in his son’s nature by the change in staff, he is mistaken. For not only does John continue his childish rebellion, but he intensifies it at the sudden arrival of James.

“And so—my Prince, where might you be going?”

John, deaf to James’ inquiry, slips between bookshelves of the palace library, flitting in and out of tall corridors as if he were the robin he saw outside his window this morning. His footsteps echo in the empty room, and he upsets the settled dust that rests upon unread books lodged atop delicately carved and underappreciated mahogany.

“Prince John,” comes another gentle call. John hates that tone of his. Hates it, hates it, hates it. It somehow reminds him all at once that he is a child, and a man no more than a decade older than him is supposedly fully grown. John is willing to bet he’s smarter than James McGraw. He’ll bet his claim to the throne that he is.

“Catch me if you can!” John begins climbing, then. He is almost a full six shelves up when he loses his footing on a loose volume of something or another and his stomach plunges as he slips, his fragile body unprepared for the solid floor—

Only he lands in awkward fashion into the steady arms of a man who smells of parchment and fresh ink and something else entirely that John can’t quite identify.

As John slips out of James’ grip he parts his lips, a quip armed behind his teeth, ready to brush off and ridicule, but James is quicker.

“What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?” John is petrified where he stands. _This_ tone—one he has never heard before—juxtaposes harshly against the gentle voice that has always chided him in the past. James is angry, and John realizes he has never seen the man angry before. Fear bubbles in his gut, but a bit of him finds whimsy in the way that James definitely cursed not only in the presence of the crown prince, but at the prince no less. “You could have been hurt. Killed! And for what? For a stupid game?”

John can’t take his eyes away from the ones that burn green a breath’s length away. He is terrified, but he is also captivated. When has he ever been treated with anything but mechanical relations, orchestrated by the classist regime that sits him at the top, second only to one man he will one day replace? The remarkably, undoubtedly infuriated man before him is the first touch of reality John has ever known. And he realizes in an instant that he needs to cling to it.

“I—I’m sorry, sir,” John replies, hoping his repentance could be conveyed not by his words but by the falter in his voice. He is acutely aware that he does not wish for James to be angry with him.

At his apology, James’ taut expression softens. “I’m not angry with you. But your actions do hold consequences on the other side of them, after the fact. I was here for you just now, but I can only imagine what could happen the next time you decide to scale a bookshelf and lose your foothold.” James pauses then, letting John gather what he is saying. “Let me know now that my imagination can rest at ease, and we can continue our lesson.”

John nods. James smiles, softly and discreetly, and turns before John can get a proper look at it.

“All right then. Where were we?”

 

A year later, John’s father broaches the topic of marriage and suitable brides for John. And for some reason, John grows irritable, impatient at the very notion of it. He proclaims himself not ready, not interested. And he doesn’t fully understand it himself, so in his turmoil and angst he takes young maid after maid into his chambers at night, fucking them senseless in an effort to quench the unknown origin of flames that raze the pit of his stomach and lap at his chest late at night when he is alone. But so far, he hasn’t found water suitable for dousing within any of the girls he takes to his bed, and his frustration only mounts higher as the days pass and the fire grows.

Soon, he is rage and torment, a tempest with no cause. It’s only a matter of time before James notices it, too.

“Prince John.” James pries the book that’s being held in a death grip from John’s fingers. They had been sitting in silence for far too long, John silently willing as the seconds passed for James to finally address it all the while. “Is there something that is concerning you?”

“Concerning me?”

“Yes. We’ve been sitting here for a half hour now, and you have done nothing but stare at one page out of an entire chapter ready for your analysis. Unless you’re already familiar with this particular novel, and you’d like to offer me an in-depth explanation of the plot thus far. And, by all means, don’t hold back. You’ve been stewing over it for so long already.” James shuts the book and sets it on the table that stands next to the two of them, sitting in chairs that face the other, knees a foot apart. It is an unorthodox approach to education and John loves it. He loved it ever since James implemented such a style weeks after the fall that changed John in some substantial way, the fall that made him look forward to his literature lessons and skirt temptations of trouble when they arose.

John meets James’ eyes and sighs. The tension within him does not cease, but it eases nonetheless. “You know as well as I that I am not prone to proactivity.”

James smirks. Ah, and a chuckle. Sometimes, John would find himself considering witty remarks within the comfort of his chambers when he can’t sleep (and when he wasn’t screwing with girls), filing particularly dry and cynical ones away to unleash upon his literary tutor just to invoke a smile, a laugh, a reaction. Considering the predisposition of his cunning mouth from a young age, it’s no short of a surprise that he’s only gotten James to laugh, truly, once. Not that his tutor is an unhappy man, but a complicated and unpredictable one, symptoms of James’ human condition and somehow elements that make John care so much about him. After all, John never cared much for simplicity.

“And so?”

“And so, what?”

“If you’re not being a good student, then what has been going on in that brain of yours for the past thirty minutes?”

John clenches his fists. Then unclenches. How is he supposed to explain the toil of the multitude of _things_ that reside within him when all they are to him are unnamable _things?_

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

“Right.”

James rubs his eyes. “Prince John.” Oh, this. His serious tone. The tone that treats him much like an adult yet much like the younger—much younger—man he is, all at the same maddening time. “You are going through an immeasurable deal of stress right now. I cannot understand, but if you’ll allow me to, I can sympathize. Your father the King has consulted with me about the matters concerning his proposals—”

“My father talked to _you_ about marriage?” John cries. James stops speaking, abruptly, and John doesn’t realize that his allowance to continue his interruption is bait. “And you let him?”

“I did. I act as an informal sort of counsel to him, at times.”

John scoffs. “‘At times’? Times like deciding who the fuck I’m going to be betrothed to—a whore I will no doubt grow to hate in the years I will be forced to carry out with her. Oh, yes, very inconsequential times like these! Do I even matter at all to you?” Suddenly, John is on his feet, and he can feel the watery side effects of rage begin to well and clog his vision.

“Prince John, do not curse—”

“I will do whatever the _fuck_ I want!” John continues as a tear falls. Another swiftly follows it, tracing the same line the first etched down his pale cheek. “I am not just going to sit back and let a man that I’ve trusted conspire my future together with my father while I have no say in it. I refuse to! So get the fuck out of this library, and I will see to it that my father hire a new tutor properly suited for the job of teaching me how to analyze words strung together by simpletons who couldn’t tell the word of an academic apart from pauper’s gossip.”

James opens his mouth to say something. John welcomes the words that could come, urges them forth, because his own words hurt his ears as he said them, though his pride holds any apology he could muster at bay. But instead, James closes lips that could have mended the wound that John inflicted, the wound between both of them, and _dammit_ if John doesn’t know James can right any wrong John could ever commit.

With a respectful bow, all protocol, James leaves the library.

John falls back into his chair and finally lets the wracking sobs loose.


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot...coming and going at the speed of light!

It is only natural that John’s father be notified of John’s request to change staff for the first time in over a year. Only now, it is to fire the man who had last been hired.

His father is not pleased. And though the King usually sees fit to bend his will to that of his only son’s, for spoil and whatnot, he does not agree to get rid of James McGraw completely. Instead, he opts for a reassignment of the man, who is to be appointed to some other position within the castle in which he can remain comfortable. But then there is also the call for a new literary tutor.

And so, several days later, a new figure takes up residency within the palace in order to continue John’s study of the arts of words. The man’s name is Thomas Hamilton.

“Pleased to meet you, Prince John,” Thomas says at their first lesson. He’s all done up, spotless from head to toe, pins pinned and jewelry polished so that it glints gold in the sunlight that filters through the high arched windows of the library. And—a powdered wig. The posturing of this man is remarkably different than the candid charm of a man who always looked to have rolled out of bed, hurriedly matched garments together, tied his hair back and would be on his way to a lesson not five minutes after waking up.

“Yes,” is all John can say. He doesn’t know this man, and the stark realization of it bruises something inside of him. He doesn’t know this man, and he doesn’t know the extent of what he’s done yet. In his anger, a flash of teenage rage, he gave up the bright times he could have with James. All for what? Emotions he cannot detect? A roil of self-deprecation threatens to overtake him, but Thomas’ next words halt the flow. He cannot look anything but pristine. And so he reaffixes his mask and looks toward Thomas again.

“I beg your pardon, what was that?”

“Oh, no need to apologize, my Prince. But I do believe you were in the middle of a very fascinating ‘Meditations’ with my predecessor, yes?”

John glances at the novel that sits on the table, untouched since the last time John was in the library. Since James had left. “Yes, I suppose I was.”

“Well then, let’s get to it.”

 

Weeks pass. Then months. John doesn’t hear of anything relating to James’ whereabouts, and he finds it nothing short of impossible to ask anyone what they may be. He knows the man is still in the castle—his own father said so once, and he can feel it, somehow. The hollowness within him would no doubt turn cold the moment James left the palace.

He gets along with Thomas fine. He doesn’t resent him, because truly, how old is he? But he does miss what he had. What he would still have if he weren’t so childish.

And so John buries the fire, rather than quenching it. He ignores its presence through the help of relentless study and work, always busy, always active, always doing something. He sees his bed less and less as time passes, and the girls stop altogether. He doesn’t stop to even wonder if his newborn habits are unhealthy, but gossip spreads among the servants within the castle, making way to the lords and finally the King.

After rumors of his only son’s sickliness reach the King, he summons John to his chambers.

“Father?” John greets as he’s ushered inside. The King dismisses the guards positioned within his room, and they exit. “What is it you want to speak with me about?”

“It has come to my attention that your mannerisms within the castle have become worrisome,” his father begins, gently. “Tell me, my son. Why is it that every other maid whispers anxiously about your wellbeing, and every other lord who is familiar with you come to me in agitation of your fitness?”

“My fitness?”

“To rule, my son.” The King sighs from his bed where he lay. “You don’t understand it yet, but you will. People watch you. You are a bright light, a light that will one day lead our great country. You cannot be dimmed by something as petty as lovesickness—”

“Lovesickness?” John’s insides go cold. For some reason he dreads what his father is thinking at the moment.

The King chuckles then, and John feels his apprehension thaw a fraction. “You do not believe I’ve heard of your nightly endeavors, my son? Ah, yes. The folly of youth.”

 _The folly of youth._ His own father thinks he’s in love with a chambermaid. How…unassuming.

“But listen to me, son.” His father’s voice drops and John can say nothing about the validity of his claim. “Now that we know the root cause of your recent state, I am going to right it. But I expect your full cooperation. Do you understand me?”

 _You don’t know anything. You don’t know, you don’t know._ “I do, Father.”

“Good, then.”

“Goodnight, Father.”

“Goodnight.”

 

Weeks later, it is announced that the sole heir to the throne is to be betrothed. The morning after John’s conversation with his father, a team of messengers were sent to a close friend of John’s father, a powerful lord by the name Guthrie, to ask for his daughter Eleanor’s hand in marriage in lieu of John proposing himself. It makes John sick even now, even after he knows her name and knows that she will not depart for the palace for another year, as the marriage will not be rushed and could take up to another year to carry out. The King is healthy, England is not at war, and the prosperity that a marriage will bring is a thing to be savored like wine, slowly and intoxicatingly. And while John refuses to allow himself full comprehension of what is to come, he is not aware of the distance he begins to shove between himself and everyone else.

A year passes, and John is no longer the carefree young boy who climbed trees and wreaked mischief all throughout his castle home, but a solemn young man readying himself to meet his future wife. He is no longer a gangly little thing; he is handsome, but in a young and new way. Dark curls have finally pushed past his shoulders, and he ties them together at the nape of his neck, as per popular fashion. His bright blue eyes are striking when they used to be teasing, and although he has not taken another maid to his bed since his conversation with his father so long ago, he hears their whispers in corridors telling of times they had been there or how they wished to be.

These comments do nothing for him. He remains the same lost young man he was the day he told James to get the fuck out of his library, hollow and listless, even more so now that he has not seen the man in over a year, and he is soon to be promised to a woman he has never known, all at the same time. But he fixates on the small bit of warmth that still resides within him, a ghost of the fire that plagued him at one time but had been smothered and not vanquished. And he knows, somehow, that as long as that warmth remains, so will James. Maybe not near him, but not impossibly out of reach. His father once told him stories of John’s mother’s intuition, how frightening it was that she could know where the King was and what he was doing, like she was an impossibly omniscient presence. John wonders sometimes, vaguely, if he was passed this gift as well, the gift of a woman’s intuition the moment his mother gave up her life to create his.

The day of Eleanor’s arrival comes with stagnant unease, and John feels, for the first time in his life, trapped. As he awaits her in the throne room, dressed like royalty and readied to meet the princess of a land he’s never known, he wonders where everything went wrong. Or, more accurately, when he came to the realization that things were going wrong.

All at once, the echoes of footsteps become more defined and a blonde girl is standing before him, clothed in luxurious garments appearing too expensive to have been comfortable to wear.

Introductions come. John doesn’t pay but half a mind to them, and it is by some stroke of unreasonable happenstance that as he daydreams out the wide windows of the room he spots bright long hair tied back in an almost friendly familiar fashion. It’s James.

After that, John’s attention is caught and held. All he sees is the man greeting a carriage in the courtyard, escorting a lady by the arm, with none other than Thomas his tutor trailing behind the pair. He’s curious, as he never knew Thomas had a woman. He had never mentioned her. But, he supposes a fifteen soon-to-be sixteen year old student can’t make for very good personal conversation.

“Prince John?” Finally as the trio enter the castle and disappear under John’s watchful eye, a voice reaches him. It’s Eleanor. “Would you like to give me a tour of the palace, then?”

John quickly pulls a smile to his lips. “Of course,” he says. “Come with me.” Imitating the gesture he saw James enact only moments ago, he holds an elbow out for Eleanor to latch onto. She does, without shy pretense, which pleases John in some inexplicable way. He’d called her a whore without having any knowledge of her, and he feels obligated, somehow, to apologize for doing so. But he ignores the impulse as they leave the throne room, a swath of servants slipping out behind them.

“I am told that our wedding is not to be planned for some time,” Eleanor says quietly as they walk. John doesn’t really know where they’re going, exactly, but walking suits him just fine, albeit the girl attached to him.

“It may not come for months. A year, even.” John wonders if this disappoints her. He’d always been led to believe that being wedded was a girl’s dream and a woman’s reality. But as he glances her way to evaluate the reaction his words cause, he sees no worry, not a hint of dissatisfaction. He wonders if Eleanor is really looking forward to any of this at all.

But why would she, if he is not the very same?

“I see.” She taps his arm and slips her arm from his. “How unpleasant.”

John gives a dry huff. “Unpleasant, huh?”

Eleanor pauses, looks him in the eye. He sees then an unflinching hardness he had only known in men until this moment. Hardness that doesn’t exist in the eyes of chambermaids as they’re fucked into a mattress that belongs to a prince.

“Yes, I am most displeased with how, after being tossed into an arranged marriage, it is to be postponed in order to make this dull shit of a country exciting again,” she says. Her voice doesn’t waver and her eyes don’t flicker from John’s.

“Really, a shit? Treason be damned.” John is laughing, somehow. A moment later, Eleanor is laughing, too.

“Yes, an unbearably annoying and unworthy existence that belongs at the very back of history books—”

“Prince John?”

John turns to see the threesome he watched enter the castle approach him. Eleanor quiets, and for the first time in what has been too long John finds himself confronted with the presence that is James McGraw.

“Hello,” John says. He nods to James and Thomas, eyeing the lady who is still at James’ side.

“Ah, you’ve yet to meet my wife, Miranda,” Thomas says as he steps forward, beckoning to the woman.

“Pleased to meet you, Lady Miranda.” John grits his teeth, the sight of the lady slipping from James with languid grace pricking his chest like a misplaced thorn.

“And I you, dear Prince,” she says, dipping into a shallow curtsey.

Moments of heavy silence follow before Miranda returns to James’ arm and says, “Well, we should be on our way.” And so they went, leaving John in the wake of them.

“What was _that_?” Eleanor asks.

“I’m not entirely sure myself,” John says. He watches the three until they disappear once again beyond the furthest point his eyes can perceive, adults en route to do adult things.

“Well, anyways. Shall we be off again?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Total chapter count is subject to change, but I won't try to drag the plot out much in the hopes that I will finally finish a story. But with the season 3 finale coming this week I doubt I'll be short on inspiration, so here's to hoping!


	3. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possible delay for the next chapter as I'll be super busy for the rest of the week, but I will say that one out of the two pairings (groupings?) of this story will get to play out in a nice way for once.

John’s father plays the key role of being the only man to decide the date of John and Eleanor’s wedding, which he sees fit to set a full year from the day she arrived. And so John and Eleanor begin to attend John’s lessons together, in order to become acquainted and possibly more than that if his father’s implications have anything to say about it.

The most interesting part of his days come with his lessons with Thomas. The dynamic he, Thomas and Eleanor share is amiable, light and easy. But it is lacking something. It’s always lacking in a library haunted by the ghost of whom it yearns for.

At the same time, John cannot help but consider, constantly, that the lady Miranda has yet to leave the palace. He doesn’t pry, but he ponders what purpose she serves. He ignores the thought that comes most readily, the one that flickers the image of the lady holding onto James behind closed eyelids at night. He wonders if she cooks, or tends to maids, or something of the like. Thoughts like these are much more bearable.

“Thomas,” John begins after a discussion that has left his and Eleanor’s minds simply exhausted by the weight of its scope. Thomas acknowledges John’s unspoken question to begin a new question with a hum. “Who is Lady Hamilton?”

Thomas brings lithe fingers to his chin, rubbing absently. “Who, you ask? Well, she’s my wife.”

Indignity burns hot upon John’s cheeks. “I know _that_ , but…”

“But?”

“Is that all?”

“It is. Why, may I ask, are you asking?”

“Well, you may not ask,” John replies, and makes sure to punctuate his words with a characteristically cheeky grin that brings a smile to Thomas’ own lips.

“My apologies, then.”

 _His wife. Of course that makes sense. How could there be any meaning belying my teacher’s wife coming to stay in the castle?_ And yet, before now, he’s never even questioned how James and Thomas came to know each other. He never knew scandal. Why had James been escorting the lady as if he and Thomas were close enough to conduct themselves in such a way? But no matter. Miranda is Thomas’ wife, no more and no less, and John’s conscience is once again at ease.

 

After that, the embargo between John and James is repealed. They greet in the hallways, in the courtyard. And it does not even occur to John that maybe James was avoiding him all this time, because although John is bright, his intelligence is almost dimmed by the happiness talking to James brings him. Though their words are shared mostly in passing, John relishes the small quips that are given and received between the two of them, as if two years and an argument yet to be apologized for does not and never did stand between them.

Thomas’ tutelage, by contrast, becomes more distant. He allows Eleanor and John to take the reins of conversation more often now, and John catches him gazing out the library windows and into the garden time to time. John, too, has always liked the garden, and he likes Thomas, so it doesn’t sit well with him to report his tutor’s sloppy work of teaching as of late. It doesn’t make logical sense. Rather than speak academically, John, Eleanor and Thomas begin to talk more about the upcoming wedding, now only months away.

“Who is to be invited?” Thomas asks one day.

“Who? Well, everyone in the castle, I presume,” John replies. “My father wants to make this into a fine mess of a spectacle any way he knows how. I wouldn’t be surprised if he invites the whole damn kingdom.” His last words are said with a laugh, but Thomas’ disapproving glance quiets him. Thomas had once spent an entire lecture berating the use of foul language and its consequences concerning intelligence and appearances.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Eleanor adds. “It would be a fine opportunity to meet people.”

“It would seem the only potential our marriage would hold is the opportunity to meet other people,” John laughs. Being with Eleanor has been a saving grace as of late. She’s quick with her wits and her humor is boundless, second only to John’s own. She is not the whore he ignorantly expected, but the friend he didn’t know he needed.

Thomas sighs, a feigned wistful little noise. “Ah, young love.”

John isn’t taken by surprise this time. The first instance that Thomas addressed John and Eleanor’s “love” for one another had gripped him with shock’s talons before he realized he could laugh off such an assumption. After all, he is only a naïve sixteen year old in the man’s eyes.

By association, he knows that he is also only a naïve sixteen year old in another man’s eyes. Just as he’d been the naïve fourteen year old that ended their easygoing relationship and turned it into something convoluted that pains him even now while he remains unaware as to why exactly it hurts. Because surely talking to James should be much like talking to Eleanor, only it isn’t. James has never been relatable to anyone John has known in his life; there is no basis to the man’s enigma. And while John was once privy to the shutters that kept the man’s secrets locked away, he can no longer fathom what James has become without feeling the lonesome strain in his chest that aches to feel something, anything, even the fire that drove him nearly mad years ago.

 

That night, John finds himself in the library, shrouded in shadow but enabled by lamplight to maneuver his way to one shelf in particular. The shelf he fell from when he was thirteen, into the arms of his literary tutor. Everything started there, and yet John did not know what everything was to begin with.

His bare foot stubs into a book on the otherwise kempt floor, and he bends to pick it up, exchanging it for the candle. The cover, although notably plain, is familiar somehow. He turns it to its spine, and the title reads “Meditations.”

Oh. This book…the one he never finished. Well, not with James. Finishing the novel with Thomas was pleasant, but John _remembered_ how his and James’ knees would often touch at times they were deep in thought over a novel, heads simultaneously inclined over text as if to share one mind as they read.

Nostalgia quirks his lips and he opens the cover, ready to flip to the first page that is a milestone in itself for a young man who had come to love books through the persuasion of another, but stops when he notices writing in a delicate hand on the blank page. John reads the note, then reads it again. And again as his lungs pause and his heart races. Then, all at once, fire returns to his body after years of absence and he flings the book as far away as he can muster, uncaring of the splintering echo breaking glass offers the empty library as the hardcover book crashes through a window.

_James, my truest love. Know no shame. T.H._

James. T.H.

John rips more books from the shelf nearest to him, slewing them across the library and paying no heed to the damage he’s wreaking. Suddenly, a book falls atop the candle on the ground and extinguishes the flame, and all at once John loses the will to rage anymore. He collapses to his knees and pretends like he can ignore what he saw, ignore the sickness that gnaws at his belly for reasons not including one that would be the norm to experience after such a discovery. And suddenly, it hits him, like that damned book through the glass, it hits him all at once.

He isn’t angry that James, all this time, was a loathsome homosexual, as society would entitle. In a swift stroke of enlightenment, he realizes that he is not angry that it is with Thomas himself. He is angry because it isn’t him. He is angry because he desires to be where Thomas stands in James’ eyes, and he is not, and he does not know if he can or ever will be.

John picks himself up, all sweat and tears and unmasked if it weren’t for the merciful cover of darkness, and flees the library, the toll of new burdens heavy in his step.

 

The call for a premature halt to his studies until after the fast-approaching wedding come the next day. It’s impeccable timing, really, and John can’t help but appreciate such a play of fate. He doesn’t know what he would even begin to say if he should find himself before Thomas again, and as for James…well, he doesn’t even want to think about the man, not with his new knowledge.

Graciously, the preparations for the wedding are time consuming and John finds himself immersed in activity from the time he wakes to the time he collapses into bed at night. Not that he is required to oversee the goings on of these endeavors, but Eleanor accompanies him throughout the day as well, deeming the exertion bearable. At any rate, he enjoys her company, and she seems to enjoy talking to servants and working with them to create the ceremony of a lifetime, as it is to be perceived. So prince and lady see to their own wedding, a silent but understanding leave issued by John’s father. John suspects he believes the scrutiny by which John handles the wedding plans with is due to his complete and utter obsession with Eleanor, a topic of conversation the King has not been averse to talking about with his son over the past few weeks. After all, the two were given a year to fall in love.

Not only did that plan fail miserably, but it also gave way to a much more damaging, darker realization of love than even John expected. Of course he would never ask to fall in love with a man. But how can he now deny himself admittance of his own heart? A heart that is dark and twisted in the eyes of society still deserves to love.

It’s in his chambers when Eleanor brings her suspicions to light.

“Your dedication to seeing this ceremony through is rather interesting,” she begins.

“What?” John knows what she’s getting at, but the prospect of talking to her about what exactly goes on in his head—things he himself is just beginning to discover—rings a warning bell. Eleanor is clever, and possibly the last person he wants inside his head at the moment. The conflict of interest between marrying a girl for political gain and being enamored with another man is too great.

“It’s simply interesting how you act no differently towards me, the woman you are marrying, and yet you are preparing for this wedding as if it is your last supper.” Eleanor is sitting by the hearth in a rocking chair carved by a famous artisan for his mother. She fits without flaw. John sits atop his regal bed, too small to fill it properly.

“I suppose that is interesting.”

“I would suppose so.”

John laughs aridly. “You don’t think I’m just head over heels for you, my love?” he asks, and it’s been a while since he’s cracked a joke but he fits back into the role of the comedian he used to be without thinking like an old but beloved shoe.

“You love me, yes,” Eleanor says. She catches John by surprise, but she carries on. “You do love me, but not in the way your father would have it, not in the way your kingdom would have it. Even so, this wedding seems to be keeping you alive and moving, and I cannot understand why that is if you do not love me in the way you are expected to.”

“I don’t see any problem there. A wedding is a wedding, it’s important.” John nearly winces as he speaks.

“You don’t even believe that,” Eleanor says. There’s hurt in her eyes. “I thought you could tell me anything. That _we_ could tell each other anything. Please, John, don’t prove me wrong now.”

John shakes his head. He’s suddenly reminded of that note—that damned note. _Know no shame._ Though the message was not intended for his conscience, he is tormented by its meaning. How can he not know shame when shame is all that awaits him the moment he hands the forbidden truth to the world to judge?

“I just want to make sure that you are happy with your wedding,” John says. His words form from his tongue harder than he means them. “What with you being tossed into an arranged marriage and all.”

Eleanor doesn’t say anything for a moment. They sit and stare at each other, unused to arguing, and the communication that passes in the silent space between them conveys words John never learned how to say, like apologies and tenderness that are and had always been smothered by sharpened wit and royal pride.

“All right,” she says. There is no hurt or anger in her voice. “All right.” She picks herself up from the rocking chair and moves to the bedside to pull John close. “All right.”


End file.
